Agricultural industrialization must not breach the boundaries of sustainable development
Exactly what approach should be used to develop agriculture, and what kind of agriculture should China develop. Different understandings, when reflected in agricultural development practice, produce different results. The approaches to agricultural development can be diverse, and the paths to achieving agricultural modernization are not set in stone, but agricultural development has its own laws. No matter what approach to agricultural development is chosen, it must be premised on not violating the laws of agricultural development, otherwise setbacks and failures will follow, and there have already been many such lessons. Therefore, on the issue of agriculture, it is necessary to correctly understand the judgment of “using an industrial approach to develop modern agriculture.”
As is well known, agricultural modernization must be built on the foundation of industrial modernization, and the impact of industry on agriculture is very profound and multifaceted.
First, the impact of industrial civilization on agriculture is shown in the widespread application of industrial technology and industrial products to agriculture, such as plastic film, irrigation technology, agricultural facilities, agricultural machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and so on. Without the support of modern industry, agriculture could only hover at the traditional level.
The ecological agriculture and organic agriculture currently advocated also cannot stand apart from the achievements of modern industrial civilization and remain aloof on their own.
Second, agricultural industrialization must draw on industrial methods, or rather, agricultural industrialization itself is an embodiment of industrial methods. Like industrial development, modern agriculture has already broken the traditional small-scale, self-contained agricultural model and moved toward specialization. From seed selection and planting to agricultural research, farmer education, and then to agricultural product processing, transportation, storage, and sales, every link in agricultural production has drawn on industrial methods. And according to industrial methods, all links in the entire agricultural industry chain are connected, ultimately achieving industrial integration.
Third, industrial management methods and organizational methods provide reference for modern agriculture. For example, input and output, cost and benefit, and the concept of organization all provide basic principles and methods for the construction of modern agricultural organizations.
At the same time, it must also be seen that agriculture and industry are two modes of production and follow different laws, so industrial methods cannot be mechanically transplanted into the agricultural field. One agricultural enterprise contracted farmers' land, hired farmers to work in the fields, and required farmers to wear uniforms like factory workers, implement an eight-hour workday, and clock in and out on time, which met with resistance and ridicule from the farmers. This is because such practices neglect the characteristics of agriculture and often raise agricultural production costs, lower labor quality, and increase risks. Developing agriculture by industrial methods can also lead to environmental damage. The important reason many enterprises fail in running agriculture is that they mechanically apply industrial methods.
Therefore, in understanding the relationship between industrial methods and agricultural methods, it is necessary to grasp the characteristics of agriculture. For some industrial methods suited to agriculture, production can be carried out according to industrial methods. For some agricultural labor that has not yet developed to the stage of adopting industrial methods, or that lacks the environmental conditions for industrial methods, reality must be respected and industrial methods must not be mechanically applied.
At present, the most worrying issue is how to correctly handle large-scale agricultural operation or land transfer. Scale is an important embodiment of industrial methods, and large-scale agriculture is an inevitable trend for future agriculture, but this is a process realized naturally along with the non-agricultural transfer of labor. However, in actual work, some people confuse trend with ideal and try to immediately achieve so-called scale targets through artificial interference, resulting in land transfers that violate farmers' wishes and are forced, pursuing formal scale, and the result harms farmers and also harms agriculture.
Therefore, Premier Li Keqiang emphasized: “On the basis of respecting farmers' wishes, we should promote moderate-scale operations in multiple forms without rigid uniformity.” General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his speech at the fifth meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform that developing large-scale agricultural operations must adapt to the process of urbanization and the scale of rural labor transfer, adapt to the progress of agricultural science and technology and the degree of improvement in production methods, and adapt to the improvement of the level of agricultural socialized services. Without these conditions, blindly promoting scale will result in the government spending money to create large-scale wasteland, and this phenomenon has already appeared in various places.
Theoretically speaking, large-scale operation does indeed have many benefits, such as reducing field ridges, expanding the area of cultivated land use, and facilitating mechanized operations. However, these benefits are insignificant compared with farmers' production initiative and sense of responsibility. The advantages of scale must not be used to cover up its drawbacks, still less to deny the fundamental agricultural management system. In the practice of modern agricultural development, special attention must be paid not to create landless farmers for the sake of some people's scale, not to pursue scale for the sake of mechanization, and even less to pursue scale for the sake of scale. Mechanization and scale are only means of modern agriculture and must not be treated as ends. Otherwise, the cart will be put before the horse. In particular, some people use the inconvenience of field ridges for mechanized operations as a reason to deny the basic rural management system, which is extremely dangerous.
The various unsustainable drawbacks that appear in the process of developing agriculture by industrial methods, such as environmental pollution, depletion of soil fertility, and short-term benefits, can only be solved through the approach of ecological civilization. When we examine agricultural development from the perspective of ecological civilization, we will find that concepts in the ecological civilization conceptual system, such as the holistic agricultural concept, the concepts of sustainability and diversification, the agricultural model combining planting and breeding, and self-organizing agricultural systems, will replace the concepts of industrial civilization and play an increasingly greater role in modern agricultural development.